Rev. Jason M. Kaspar Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & PreschoolLa Grange, TX
©2021 Jason Kaspar. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com.
It’s my turn to ask a question. Mine stems from a collection of axiomatic “truths” shared within modern Christianity. All of them are attempts to answer questions about attendance. We’ve seen attendance fall for decades in the Christian church. There is a rise in self-identified secularism within America. We’ve been talking about it my entire life, from various perspectives.
The answers revolve around the question, “how do we keep kids, youth, and young families in church/returning to church?” The answers of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries are: Sunday school programs, daycares, adolescent activities, big youth groups/activities, small group Bible studies, single mother’s groups, and a host of other demographically specific parachurch (outside of worship) activities. Despite the best efforts of the church in these veins, she still shrinks daily.
What if I told you that we could expend our efforts on only one demographic group? What if I told you that we could see a 35% improvement in the retention of children, as adults, by focusing only on this one group? What if I told you the Christian church has largely ignored, marginalized, or even publicly denigrated this group?
Men, specifically fathers, are this one group. A large multi-national study on church attendance published by the Swiss government in the year 2000 found stark trends indicating the strong influence of fathers on the future church attendance of their children. Another study conducted on a much smaller scale later in the US found nearly identical results. (see Influence of Parents in this article)
Starting with the worst and most obvious, when neither mom nor dad attend church, 81% of the kids won’t either. When, only mom attends regularly, 39% of the kids will attend regularly as adults. When, both mom and dad attend regularly, 74% of kids will attend as adults. But, here’s the surprising number. When only dad attends regularly, 67% of kids attend as adults. Without mom’s influence, there’s only a 7% drop. Without dad’s influence, there’s a 35% drop.
No, I’m not suggesting, implying, or stating in any way that women and mothers are unimportant. The influence of women and mothers in the lives of their children is incalculable and irreplaceable.
That still changes nothing regarding a change in church attendance. If we want to see an improvement in the retention of our children in church, we must expend our efforts on improving the attendance of their fathers at church on Sunday mornings.
It is certainly worth noting that a rise in emotionalized and feminized worship practices in the Christian church run parallel to the decline in men’s attendance. There are probably many ways to work on this. We will have to pick this up again soon.
Strong Christian men raise faithful Christian children.
Rev. Jason M. Kaspar
Sole Pastor
Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church & Preschool
La Grange, TX
and
Mission planting pastoral team:
Epiphany Lutheran Church
Bastrop, TX
©2021 Jason Kaspar. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com.
Why don’t we cater to fathers then?
I’ll be writing more on this soon. “Cater to” may not be the best solution. I’d postulate that the first course of solution is to purge those elements, which repel men. Then, there are multiple directions to attack this issue of encouraging attendance: men good-naturedly badgering each other about attendance, re-introducing the work that needs doing lists, and so forth.
Active doing in the church w/o unnecessary accolades will be more appealing.
Then, there’s the internal problem of confusing church life and worship attendance. The focus must be and must only be measured by church attendance. Bringing men into midweek bible breakfasts, beers with pastor, or workdays are useful. But, they don’t accomplish the primary goal: men bringing their children into the sanctuary on Sunday.